In A Word
by Duck Life
Summary: Amy, Rory, nostalgia, and a typewriter. SPOILERS for TATM. Oneshot. Please R&R!


_Hello old friend. And here we are. You and me on the last page._

She paused, fingers set on the rounded keys. It had taken her over a year to master the typewriter- she kept finding her hands falling into the familiar laptop keyboard position, kept reaching down for the mouse pad. There was other stuff, too- relearning how to drive the old cars, using the old phones. It had taken her and Rory ages to realize that the reason the living room furniture didn't feel right was the lack of a television.

Still, they had adapted. And they had waited- waited for news, waited for a sign, waited for the moment when it all fully sunk in. They would never see the Doctor again. They had to say goodbye. But how?

It was three years after Amy left the Doctor in the graveyard (well, 71 years before, really) that River came back and gave her the idea of writing an afterword.

_By the time you read these words, Rory and I will be long gone, so know that we lived well and were very happy._

"How do you know?" Rory surprised her, coming up behind her with a cup of black coffee and reading what she'd typed over her shoulder. "How do you know we'll have lived well and been happy?" He leaned down, level with her. "We've only just got here."

"I think it's safe to assume," she said with a smile, and leaned up to kiss him on the mouth. Returning to the typewriter, she frowned. "I don't know how to write this. What do I say? What do you say to a person you'll never see again?"

"Tell him we love him," said Rory. "I mean, sure, he got us into some trouble. We all had our fights. But seriously, Amy, where would we be without the Doctor?"

She snorted. "Well, you'd be dead about… seven times." He grinned, but they were both remembering it. The fall from the rooftop, Rory dead of old age floors below. Never again.

_And above all else, know that we will love you. Always. _

"Do you ever look for him?" said Rory suddenly. "Look up the street expecting a blue box to appear, or check behind you… to see if he's keeping up?" He was looking out the window now, and with his face turned away Amy could see the nostalgic tilt to his mouth.

"I don't think we'll ever really stop."

_Sometimes I do worry about you, though. I think, once we're gone, you won't be coming back here for awhile and you might be alone, which you should never be. _

_Don't be alone, Doctor. _

"He'll be fine," said Rory, though he sounded as though he were just trying to convince himself. "He's got the TARDIS."

"Mad man with a box," Amy said. She remembered stepping inside that box, watching a whole world expand inside of it, watching the Doctor's pleased expression at her reaction, like a child showing off his favorite toy.

She stared at the paper in front of her, sticking out of the typewriter, so _final_. Amelia's final farewell. "Why is everything else so _easy_?" she pondered aloud. She'd picked up a job at a local paper shortly after showing up with Rory in 1938, and since then she'd written dozens of articles, not just travel pieces but current events, crimes, parades- she'd even dipped her toe in sporting events, and these were the late thirties! Women in journalism were rare, and even rarer were women so dedicated, who could write the same articles as the men did. She'd made herself quite the icon, not that she was aware. She had no idea how she'd be remembered, no idea that young girls across the world would be inspired by her, no idea that some would grow up to be the great names in journalism. One day, a girl called Sarah Jane would read one of her articles and it would change her life.

And yet… "What do I write?" Amy looked up at Rory, fingers drifting anxiously over the typewriter keys. "I don't know what to write."

"Just…" He thought about the running, and the traveling, and all the mad, impossible things they'd done together. He thought about rebooting the universe and fighting a band of angry dolls and escaping a burning Dalek planet. "Tell him a story."

_And do one more thing for me: There's a little girl waiting in a garden. She's going to wait a long while, so she's going to need a lot of hope. Go to her. Tell her a story. Tell her that if she's patient, the days are coming that she'll never forget. Tell her she'll go to sea and fight pirates, she'll fall in love with a man who'll wait two thousand years to keep her safe, tell her she'll give hope to the greatest painter who ever lived, and save a whale in outer space. _

Rory was tearing up, but he smiled at her. "That's nice. I like how I'm in it." She laughed and squeezed his hand. "When did you save a whale in space?"

"That's a whole other story," she said.

_Tell her this is the story of Amelia Pond, and this is how it ends. _


End file.
